> Fine. But should a level 10 miner produce 50 times as much gold as> a level 1 miner? Or perhaps only ten or three times as much?

The way I think about this is: The *definition* of a Level 10
is that he is 50 times better than a Level 1.

Now, if that isn't possible/feasible for miners, say, then there
should be a cutoff for that skill. A documented cutoff, I hasten
to add :-).

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That being said, let me say that I think Steve still has it wrong for
combat. Assuming that it takes 50 times as long to train someone to
Level 10 than to Level 1, a Level 10 fighter ought to do much more
than 50 times as much damage. If he doesn't, it will *always* be to
the players advantage to make bigger, less skilled units.

The reasons are twofold.

First, bodies are a combat resource. They're hit point sinks.
A battle between two stacks that do the same amount of damage will
be won by the stack with more bodies. This skews battle towards
larger, less skilled units.

Second, the cost of raising a unit to a high level isn't only the time
involved. There's a high cost in terms of money to train the unit, and
a high cost in terms of lost productivity while training.

The net effect is that unless the combat factor is greater than the
training time factor, combat troops at least will always be skewed
towards larger, less skilled units. In fact, this will probably hold
for all skills, since there are intrinsic benefits to having large
units over small units.

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Frankly, like Rich, I think that a 50+ to 1 range for skill use is a
bit to extreme. That's why I suggested cutting the levels for skills
down to something on the order of 3. That would give a range of usage
of say, 20 to 1, which would be more reasonable.